He looks in the mirror and attempts to suck in his stomach, holding his breath until his rib cage sticks out in deep defined lines on his abdomen.

So maybe he won't eat dinner this week. Just an apple now, half a sandwich later? He can control that, he can make it work. He is used to running far on empty. He loses track of things like eating most of the time anyways. There's an ache in his shoulders that no amount of stretching can unknot. Paper confetti like snowflakes is strewn across the carpet. The air conditioner buzzes and rattles as Frank Sinatra's voice comes slow and mellow from the radio by the window.

He sits on the couch, not bothering to untangle the earbuds. His pointer finger tapping the spacebar as he tries to summon a plan. To decipher whatever cloud has been overtaking him lately.

He has rules that must be followed. He is sick of neglect, of doubting. Perhaps he should leave hope, grow a thin cold sheet of ice, a gentle frost to protect and accept the world for what it is; not what Melanie makes it out to be.

It had all started as a week of dazed exhaustion. A sick tingly feeling that he can only explain as lemon zest. Cold, refreshing, but bitter and strange.

It's grown dull now, its metallic shimmer dissipated into the mundanity of what is perceived as normal. He catches glimpses of memory in certain TV shows and songs. In a flash he can see the dark green of his room, the grey carpet, and the shelves with family photos- course, it's all gone now. Nothing and no one left to remember it but a vacant lot. He'll write someday, ask them to make it a community garden or something like that.

---------

"Wait, Steele?" Josh cried in excitement as he entered. He took his place in the opposite corner, suit jacket over a graphic t-shirt, hair washed and combed as it had not been for some time past.

Mel laughed and pulled her feet up onto the chair, a bit flushed, "Yeah, my Dad has a minor position of sorts there."

"You're kidding. Your Dad works at Steele Industries? You know someone who works there!?"

"Guilty as charged...it's a...kinda a family business. Cousins and such...."

Josh scrambled for words, "Steele- Steele has been the domineering facilitator of security for like what, twenty years now? The work they do in computer progress and international relations is legit revolutionary, like it's the Rembrandt of the modern technological age. I have to spend ten minute just gawking at the building from the side walk every day-"

Mel grinned and sunk a little in her hoodie as a few friends passed and glanced into the room.

"Well, maybe sometime you'll have to come inside," she says and takes to threading a bright string of blue into nylon. She speaks hushed, as if the inside were a well guarded secret, a labyrinth of wiring and deadlocks all in the marble floored lobby of a skyscraper. "Visit sometime?"

"Visit?" he gawks practically giddy at the prospect, "You mean that? Cause if you're kidding Mel it's not even funny a little bit." 

"Not kidding scouts honor! I mean it. And before you say it, it's no trouble."

She isn't happy with what she does, he can tell that much by the way she watches her supervisor with disdain and grows short and brisk in her comments with others. She has rubbed her necklace smooth on the lettered side, pulling the clasp to the back of her neck in a swift jerk whenever she got the feeling it was misplaced. There's a great terror in the possibility of attachment. The idea that she might not be as kind as she acts, that her greatest mercy is in simply tolerating.

In arid minds strict and calculating there is never room for something as aquatic and free as conspiracy. Rather, for him it is an internal mutiny. Lately he finds it creeping up within him against his will. A silent what if nagging as a thread starts to pull and stitch together.

-----------

She sometimes thinks she's caught a glance of him before all these years. Parked at an intersection or a mutual friend at some small town diner. The truth is, she doesn't care. What matters is they had met eventually.

She has been there to stick up for him, to talk to and to be with. She turns to leave, to go fix the costumes for the second act when he spins in the desk chair and calls out after her. She likes the feeling there's something hinted at when he smiles. Moreover when the smile fades and for a fraction of a second he seems to be more concerned, heartbroken over the loneliness of a lost friend than over any misfortune he's ever endured so valiantly.

"They're wrong you know."

"What?" she laughs, swiveling on her heels.

"They're wrong, the synopsis people. The story isn't a romance about Heathcliff and Catherine." He bites down on the wood of his pencil, little yellow flakes of paint lodging in his slightly crooked teeth. "It's uh, it's about Hareton."

She stares at him wide-eyed, "You read it?"

"It's not about heartbreak either really, sparknotes got it wrong for once. I oughta call about that I guess. Thousands of middle school students will be suffering over their failed ELA essays."

"It's about what comes after," Melanie cut in quickly, a smile coming against her will, "I know, I agree."

"I think I'll call them, 'Mr. Sparks and Mr. Notes may I suggest hiring my friend Melanie to the committee of nim wits who universally interpreted this book wrong?  Oh no? Theres no need for security sir I just think you're making a grave error." 

"Very funny." 

"I believe," Josh laughed, "that I owe you ten bucks."

"Keep it," she shrugged, "keep your ten dollars."

"Why?"

"What's a few dollars worth to me? You read it; good for you." 

------------

He puts the electrical tape over his webcams when he isn't using them, piles of research books all stacked up against the trim of his apartment walls.

The screen changes just for a moment tonight as he types away, the cursor twitching half a centimeter right as his eyes narrow and he removes his hands from the keyboard. Five minutes, ten, he watches.

As someone watches him.

He disconnects the wifi and shuts it down cold, shutting it hard as his frown grows.

A miss-fire? Or maybe something more like crossfire.

He thinks of what a friend like Mel might mean. Maybe this is why she speaks her name low and keeps her life at home and work, not so much friends and others. Why she doesn't want to walk home alone. How hadn't he connected it from the beginning? How could she keep something like that such a secret for so long?

Course he couldn't be mad, there were a thousand things he was hiding daily. He finds it interesting that no one can ever really replace her now, there's a thousand little details all locked in and dead bolted. Maybe he'll work up the gumption to ask about her parents someday, but for now she doesn't seem to mind goofing off on lunch breaks and walks home. Maybe Melanie Steele won't mind him pretending just a little while longer.